Archaeologia Baltica

The process of the recolonisation of northern Europe after deglaciation is related to groups of hunter-gatherer societies called

This article reviews current scientific evidence of food resources exploited in the Lithuanian Stone and Bronze Ages and presents the new direct, biochemical stable isotope evidence. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were performed on 75 Stone and Bronze Age animal bone samples and 23 human bone samples. We discuss how the obtained values relate to diet and other evidence of diet, compare the obtained values with regional stable isotope data, and consider sociocultural implications.

The article is devoted to examine the importance of horse image in the poetic texts of various genre Lithuanian folk songs from different local ethnic regions. We find different meanings of the biological horse here, such as riding-horse, working horse, mare and jade here as the representatives in the special social context here. The general conclusion is made about horse as very important symbolic object with wide and deep its meanings in the poetic texts of Lithuanian folk songs.

As refers to the first article (the one concerning the Przeworsk Culture), the abstract is as follows: The author tries to reconstruct the role of the horse in the Przeworsk Culture basing on the extremely rare horse graves, remains of horses’ bones in human graves (generally edible parts of skeletons), unique images of horsemen and horses of clay vessels (urns) and pieces of horse harness as well as spurs found in weapon graves. Results of archaeological researches are also taken into consideration.

In this article, we discuss the phenomenon of crescent-shaped pendants dating back to the Late Roman Iron Age and Early Migration Period (3rd – 6th centuries AD). Placed on horse’s foreheads, these crescent-shaped pendants evidently embodied a mythological link between the moon and the horse. The same link is clearly reflected in linguistic data and folklore right up until the 20th century. We draw special attention to a horse with a white mark on its forehead called laukas (adj.), laukis (noun) in Lithuanian, which derives from the I-E root *louk- ‘shining, bright’, as also does the Latin luna (< *louksnā). Considering the data as a whole, we propose an unexpected link between the Baltic and Roman traditions.